Canada’s financial committment to maternal health rings in at 2.85 billion over five years. Government backgrounder here:

For mothers and newborns, Canada will focus its efforts on improving the services and care needed to ensure healthy pregnancies and safe delivery, while placing a particular emphasis on meeting the nutritional needs of pregnant women, mothers, newborns and young children.  To address child mortality, Canada will work to increase access to the high-impact, cost-effective interventions that address the leading killers of children under the age of five. 

This is good news. Front page headline in the Globe and Mail–Ottawa refuses to fund abortion in G8 plan. And Margaret Wente may be right, that this will change nothing on the ground in the developing world and that this is a North American ideological battle. But it’s an important battle, because women’s health does not include abortion, not here and not abroad. It’s important because abortion shouldn’t be publicly funded. It’s important because North American ideologues who always think abortion is part of everything shouldn’t win the day. It’s important because the current Canadian government’s position on this IS the tolerant, compromising one. Of all the things that can be worked on and improved in the developing world does anyone–anyone!–really think “access to abortion” is the main item?